At only 24, Nick Laborde spends his days “spinning a hundred different plates.”
Laborde leads a global team of programmers, artists, producers, and composers as CEO of Raconteur Games, the video game development company he started while earning his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in Management at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
A management degree allowed Laborde to pursue his passion — video games — from a different angle.
“There are so many smart programmers and smart artists that could make really great things but don’t want to do the business side,” Laborde said. “I was always attracted to that element of how can we make our organizations run better, how can we figure out better processes, how can we ultimately work together to make games better in the end because we have a healthier corporate culture or a better production process.”
Laborde, a Central Louisiana native, enrolled at UL Lafayette as a computer science student but switched his major before his first semester began in 2012.
“I wrote four lines of code and then realized it wasn’t for me,” he said. “I knew I wasn’t an artist either, so I thought, ‘well maybe I can find the people and manage people and run a game group that way.’
“I ended up falling in love with everything I learned in my business education.”
The B.I. Moody III College of Business Administration strives to provide management students with a superior business foundation with core courses in communications, marketing, accounting, finance, leadership, economics, ethics, and business law.
And now that program is offered 100-percent online.
Whether attending online or on-campus, like Laborde, students graduate with the skills needed for success in any industry and a variety of roles.
Management graduates are also well positioned to pursue their Master of Business Administration degree, which is exactly what Laborde did.
“In the vast majority of my MBA classes, it was all concepts that had been touched on in one form or another in my undergrad,” he said. “Obviously, they’re a different level of challenge, but I felt like I had such a strong foundation for my MBA because of all the classes I took in my management program.”
Laborde has been able to build Raconteur, as well as a consulting business, on the cornerstones laid by the real-world business education he received.
He said professors like Dr. Mark Smith, management department head, and Dr. Denis Boudreaux, economics and finance, delivered life-long lessons through the lens of their experiences.
“I think everyone brings something to the table, whether you have 30 years or five years of experience, but the professors on the higher end of real-world experience had a very unique way of breaking content down that felt very practical,” Laborde said. “They had a lot of influence in the way I run my businesses today.”
And as Laborde advises other entrepreneurs and small business owners to help grow their businesses, that influence is spreading across Louisiana.
If you want to expand your career opportunities, consider earning your business degree in management online with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Request information today to get started.